I wasn't planning on uploading something today, but I got lucky on my recording levels, and I played the song half decently; so I've uploaded a tune to Soundcloud. The is the closest I've yet come to having something worth putting on a CD. It's still rough in spots, and I was a little too light on the open A string, and one fill was completely improvised when I forget the line as it was supposed to be played. But I made it all the way through (short song), and the quality of the tone isn't bad. Anyway, I thought it worth sharing with you guys.

I've listened to Message To The Heart as well as A Spring Day a number of times. All I can say is that both tunes bring out what I take to be your unique personality and bring me back to a much earlier time when unencumbered by other responsibilities I'd come home from work most days, throw on the headphones and listen to early Weather Report (Weather Report, I Sing the Body electric, & Sweetnighter).

Your work "sings" and evokes a visual as well as an auditory response.

I wasn't going to upload this one. I recorded it a few weeks ago and then put it aside; but I just listened to it, and it's not too bad. So I thought I would share it with you.

There are some mistakes, so it's not CD worthy; but it's close. And there's some rig noise; I guess at some point I'm going to have to tear apart my rig and see if I can get rid of the noise.

This tune is in two parts; the first part is essentially a prelude, and the second is my arrangement of a song many of you may be familiar with. I would like to see if it's recognizable; so don't look at the name of the song and let me know if you can tell what it is.

Like the others, it's hidden from public view; but you can hear it here.

Thanks Harry! Yeah, I guess I feel like I'm just putting these up temporarily just for you guys and a few other friends until I record better versions. (I wouldn't want the music police to hear this stuff.) But then I've yet to record a "finished" version of anything.

I think you can post what you have put here publicly with no embarrassment whatsoever. Just put "demo" or "work in progress" so people know.

But I know it's a personal decision so do what you feel. Now that I think about it, I slave over my stuff before I put it up, so I can't be the one to tell you to just post anything or how to run your soundcloud page!

fantastic, Dave! i loved every single note, did you use a 5 string with a c on top? Is there a way to avoid that noise in the background? My series II does it sometimes too but in the studio she is almost clean..., but once again: great playin!

Thanks Peter! It's a six string, tuned normally except that the B string is capo'd at the third fret for an open D.

I don't know where the noise is coming from. I suspect grounding or maybe a bad patch cable; I don't know. I need to see if I can isolate it by starting through the signal chain, removing components and switching out cables.

Realizing that I'm forgetting a lot of the stuff I've been working on, I've recently been recording a lot of the songs even if I can't play them well yet. This morning I sat down to record a cover I've been playing for a while, though not much recently, before I forgot about it too. It turned out good enough to share with you; though the usual flubs and fluffs are included, and I haven't yet addressed the rig noise.

Some of you will recognize the name, it's by a well known rock artist. The original is beautiful. My arrangement significantly differs from the original; including that I leave out an entire section and substitute my own in its place.

The dynamic range seems a bit too wide; my rig is running a bit "hotter" than I've had it on past recordings, and sections seem a bit too loud. I like the way that it's now "breaking up" when it's driven, but I need to learn to control it.

And as with the past recordings, it's a rough demo and is not publicly accessible. Wild Theme.

[moderator's edit: original poster uploaded wrong song to soundcloud, and has posted new link to newly uploaded song below; edited to strike through previous link]

Great piece! I always love listening to your music, the composition, execution and sounds are always a joy. The tone has a reminiscence of the original, as well, but it's all new enough that it's its own thing.

Very nice indeed! and well played, oh Moder Dave. Based on the thread title, I was thinking maybe "Wild Thyme" from ABAB by the Airplane. Obviously a wild guess on my part. No more divergences from me here, but if the Highway of Life takes you to the Schlossen Cutoff - Stay In Your Car! Mike

It's been a while since I've uploaded anything new, but I thought I would share this one that I've been working on recently. It still needs polishing, but I'm slowly making progress with it. This is my arrangement of the orchestral passage that opens the second movement of Beethoven's fifth piano concerto. Uploaded to soundcloud here.

The overall quality of this track seems the best I've done yet; there are only a few noticeable flubs, and the consistency of the lines is getting better. Getting closer to something perhaps worth putting on a CD.

The raw recording was done on my new Zoom R16. I used Audacity to take out line noise and to set the beginning and end, including the fade out, and to also raise the level of the track to a 0db ceiling.

Well, since you asked, the only thing I'd say in terms of sound quality is that it sounds like it could some very slight mastering, just to bring up the overall level a bit with a little bit of limiting or compression (although it's very nice to hear something like this with all of its dynamic range intact) and perhaps a bit more of the low end. The wonderful tone of your instrument and your playing does shine through, though, and that's what really matters. If the listener finds themselves caught up in the music, you know you've done a good job and that's the case here.

Edwin, and others with experience in this; eventually I hope to have maybe ten or so songs to put on a CD. (It will take a while; I'm slow.) My expectation is that there is no significant "market" for this music, and that distribution would for the most part be to friends. For this and household budgetary reasons, I don't want to expend significant funds on this project. I am considering putting the songs up on CDBaby or some similar service, and having them available for download and possibly for streaming, in addition to actual CD's. (I'm still learning about all of this, and the technology seems to change faster than I can read. For instance, apparently Apple is getting ready to launch Apple Music, which from what I read will change the industry significantly.)

I've also been doing some reading about mastering; and Edwin, within the light of what I've read, your point is well taken. My guess is that the difference that mastering would make on the finished songs might significantly depend on who does the mastering. I'm also guessing that there might be a significant difference in price as well.

Again, it may be a while before I have ten or so songs recorded; but I would appreciate any advice on how I should proceed with mastering at that point; who generally I should consider, what I might expect in cost, how I should prepare, and whether it's worth the cost.

A couple things I've read are that the recording provided to the engineer should have a db ceiling of less than -3db to leave room for the engineer to do their work, and that the recording should be 24 bit. So, apparently there are things I should know before I even record the songs, if I intend to have them mastered.

I have much to learn.

Thanks again for the kind comments and suggestions. They help show me how to proceed from here.

Mastering is one of those issues with variables relavent to the monitors used and the persons hearing who is listening ( and doing the mastering). . Too many " Mastering Engineers "step over the line of their own preferances in a way that does not reflect the intentions of the artist AND muscians that end up unhappy without a say in the matter because they were just " sidemen" or a session player only with out a "say".

Often neglected by some mastering engineers are the intended sonic aspects and sound preferences of the instrumentalist and or vocalists . Recently the sound of my Bass was compressed and equalized in a way that I did not care for on a recording for a local song writer singer. My Alembic sound was messed with in a way that I did not care for at all . .

Wolf, you wrote "... the intended sonic aspects and sound preferences of the instrumentalist." I don't even know how to express to someone what the intended sonic aspects and sound preferences are. From the same site that I was reading from was the suggestion of sending the engineer some examples from other recordings that sound similar to the intended result, but I can't even do that.

I do understand what you are saying. Without guidance, the engineer wouldn't know how much limiting or compression, to use Edwin's example, I would be expecting to be applied. They wouldn't know what I want it to sound like. And I guess I don't know either.

Well, good mastering engineers wouldn't make it sound different in terms of the artistic choice the musician or engineer makes (and Wolf, without knowing more details, it sounds like you were the victim of a recording/mix engineer more than a mastering engineer). A good mastering engineer is sort of invisible, but the end product just sounds "more there". A good mastering engineer also knows their monitoring chain and room well enough that they are not making decisions and performing drastic changes based on erroneous information. It's one of those things that, when done well, are simultaneously subtle and miraculous. A bad mastering engineer can completely butcher the material, but that's not always the fault of the engineer. A fair percentage of the butchered mastering jobs are the result of record companies demanding a loud record at the expense of sound quality (google The Loudness Wars).

Dave, you are right about keeping the files at the highest resolution possible with a bit of headroom. If you like, you could send me some files via dropbox and I can do a bit of work on them, just so you can hear what I am talking about. You are also right about the variability of cost and expertise. I tend to do it myself unless there's a budget, in which case I'll give the project to David Glasser at Airshow (he has done a number of the official GD releases, including the E72 box, the high res mastering of all the official studio releases, and pretty much all the video/movie releases in the last 6 or 7 years), Brad Sarno, who not only makes great preamps, etc., but is an excellent mastering engineer, or Steve Berson. There are many other good ones, but those are my go to guys.

My personal mastering philosophy is less is more. It shouldn't sound significantly different from the original recordings (unless there are obvious problems, but I don't hear those in your recordings). As far as guidance goes, it's pretty easily dealt with these days by sending references back and forth. In your style of music, limiting and compression should be pretty much inaudible. I just mentioned them because I know they could make the recording sound more present. If you hear it working, then it's too much.

Bummer. I hate it when it goes down like that. At least you know who not to go to next time! The amount of mangling it takes to change a bass sound so drastically means that the rest of the mix was also probably equally adversely affected.

Thanks Edwin! So, using the present recording as an example, I would go ahead and remove any line noise, trim the lead at the beginning, fade out the end, as I did here, and raise the db to -3 instead of 0, and that's what I would send to have mastered?

Also, when I recorded this track, I didn't realize, didn't think to check, that the default was 16 bit. But I should be recording at 24 bit?

Yes, always record at 24 bit. It means that you can have the levels set safely lower than the peaks and not incur a noise penalty. I try to keep my peaks in live recording at -8dbfs to -6dbfs, just in case anything comes along and surprises me. And, with modern digital recording, at 24 bit you can have a signal that's quite low (-20dbfs) and still pull it up to full level without too much added noise.

As far as the editing, you might want to leave out the fade if you are assembling an album because that might be something that you might want to change in the context of the other music around it. Also, it can add noise when other processing is done, even if it's minimal. Definitely edit out any noise you might have, but if it's just a live to stereo track, find out what kind of noise reduction the mastering studio might have. It can make a difference in quality and would be better than the stuff that comes with editing software. Some noise reduction software, like Sonic Solutions, CEDAR, and to a slightly lesser extent products like Izotope RX (which I use), can do amazing things and not harm the fidelity or dynamics of the music.

I totally agree with Edwin regarding a preference for 24 bits @ 96, later on you will have to what is called dither down to 16 bit 44.1 sampling freq. for a "RED BOOK" or Audio CD standard release if that is one of your choice's for release.

Dave please excuse this response to Edwins comments , I have no intention of a hi-jack .

There are various evil short cut digital software mastering programs and hardware ( as you know) that utilize multi-spectral compression . These can have an evil and adverse effect on your project if the parameters are not carefully set. I suspect that in the example that I referred to in my case above this is what could have happened. It is also entirely possible that they just agreed with me at the time in the control room during the final mix that I heard and then just did what they wanted after I had left before sending it out for mastering. This totally make sense to me , they deceived me to just make me go away ! . LOL .

Dave I hope to hear many more of your wonderful musical pieces ! They are very inspirational.

Wolf is right on. Dithering and sample rate conversion are both steps that mastering engineers typically take care of as well. Dither is pretty amazing. Done properly, it can actually let you hear detail in the music below the noise floor and it's done by adding noise! It was lack of dither and bad dither that contributed to some of the perceived negative aspects of digital audio in the early days.

While this article is outdated in many respects, it does address dither and a number of other issues that are not always intuitive. Bob Katz is a great mastering engineer, one of the best in the business. I think this is from the first version of his book Master Audio; The Art and the Science. The latest version is well worth getting for everyone who deals with recording.

And yes, Wolf, I remember when multi band compressors came out and were all the rage! I have a few of them, but they rarely get much use unless I have some forensic work to do. If a mix requires the use of one, usually that means the mastering engineer should send back the files for remixing.